PCT Day 114
August 22, 2021
Mile: 2103.0 to 2119.7 (16.7 miles)
Start: Lost Creek campsite
Finish: Salvation Springs tentsite via Ramona Falls alternate trail
Today on the PCT we were pretty exhausted after having stayed up till 2 AM the night before in Portland taking care of some administrative business, all of the travel we’ve done recently from the 14 hour bus ride from California up to Oregon and then another 3 hours of transit from Portland to the Mount Hood and still recovering from the after effects of wildfire smoke inhalation. Shannon and I took it easy this morning, sleeping in late until about 9 or 10am which is unheard of in the PCT thru-hiking world. We hung out, cooked some breakfast and just generally putzed around with our tea and coffee until about 11am when we headed back out to the trail. It was foggy again and thick white clouds rolling over the ridges obscured the views everywhere. We didn’t know what views we were missing but it didn’t matter – we were just happy to be here and so grateful to not be around wildfires and smoke again.
The morning was kind of uneventful and we took an alternate trail to go see Ramona Falls which is a gorgeous waterfall that feathers over the cliffs and spills out into dozens of tiny falls. It was pretty crowded at the famous waterfall and we sat off to the side of the crowds, cooking up some late lunch and chowing down on some broccoli and cauliflower rice. Shannon ate a fancy meal bar he had found in the Timberline Lodge hiker box as we watched hordes of tourists coming and tourists leaving. We enjoyed the falls which were flowing like crazy after a couple days of rain. It was also hilarious watching everyone trying to pose for their Instagram photos but you couldn’t blame them because the area was super pretty and magical.
After we took our obligatory photos at Ramona Falls, we headed back out on the trail. We wound our way through misty fairy lands of moss and enormous ferns next to clear teal streams. I felt like we were in a real life fairytale and that soon we’d stumble across a house made of gingerbread or encounter a girl in a red riding hood. The area was absolutely gorgeous.
Earlier in the morning we had spent probably close to an hour picking dark purple huckleberries from the king of the huckleberry patches. How could you not stop and eat fresh ripe berries when they were right next to the trail in the thousands? Some of the huckleberries were bigger than giant blueberries you buy at the grocery store. Huckleberries are close cousins of blueberries and they’re so delicious, like dark purple-black sweet and vaguely tart versions of blueberries. They are just absolutely delicious and our faces and fingers were covered in deep violet and maroon juices afterwards.
In the afternoon I put on my headphones to listen to the second book in the Lord of the Rings series and listened to the tales of the tree shepherds called the Ents and the Ent Wives and all the goings-on of Gandolf and his crew. The afternoon was not very eventful because the fog was so thick that you could barely see ahead of you. It was nice to have an audio adventure while we were hemmed in by thick clouds on all sides. We thought that we were passing views of the mountains but you know we’ll never find out because it was white clouds straight through the evening.
In addition to huckleberries, this afternoon the trail was filled with tiny blueberries that were still a little tart, deep cherry red plumes of False Solomon Seal berries and golden raspberries that were called Salmonberries. It was amazing and it felt like you didn’t have to worry about resupplying out here since there seems to be so much dang wild food. Later in the afternoon after climbing over dozens of trees blown down from a big windstorm last year, we arrived in a parking lot that seemed to be pretty busy. A passing Trail Angel had left a Trail Magic cooler full of beer and to my great surprise even a few cans of gluten free beer! It was amazing. We each grabbed a can while we talked to two girl PCT hikers named Narrator and Magnet with very colorful tights.
Narrator had lucked out this year and said that she had just been ahead of the wildfires the entire time on the trail so she only missed two small sections of PCT – one in Wrightwood, CA where just about everyone missed 25 miles and then another in northern Cali in the town of Chester where people were being evacuated. Narrator was definitely in the minority with how much of the PCT she was able to hike this year but she also started her hike in early March. Lucky lucky! Narrator said that she was kind of bummed today because the lack of views was making her sad. We were just grateful to be not on fire and to have a section of trail that was actually open for hiking! The fog was just an added element and we were even happy that it was raining a bit because we hadn’t seen rain in months.
At the backwoods parking lot beer cooler it felt like we had showed up to a backcountry bar with all the people stopping by. We met a nice guy who is traveling across North America in an RV with his wife. Currently they were traveling across the Pacific Northwest doing a lot of hikes and sightseeing. The RV guy laughed when we told him about the Trail Magic beer cooler and said, “You guys need some salty snacks to go with those beers!” Out of his RV this wonderful Trail Angel brought out some salty lentil puffs that looked just like cheese puffs but made from lentils. So we chowed down on the salty crunchy puffs and talked to him about the ongoing fires on the PCT and how crazy it is that almost all of the wilderness up here has burned in recent history with wildfires.
The RV Trail Angel said last year that 500,000 acres of woodlands in Oregon were destroyed because of the forest fires and ongoing megadroughts. 2020 was (so far) the most wildlands that have ever burned at one time in the state of Oregon in recorded history. We talked about the Dixie Fire in California which is absolutely out of control now and has closed so much wilderness and parts of the PCT and is on its way to becoming the largest fire ever in the history of the US. So far the Dixie Fire has become the second largest wildfire that has ever hit the United States and with all that inferno and the other wildfires going on you can’t hike any of Northern California’s Pacific Crest Trail. All of the NorCal National Parks, BLM land and National Forests have been closed down to the public due to wildfires. It’s so crazy because it seems like new fires across the west coast are popping up like mushrooms almost every few hours.
We explained to the Trail Angel that we were trying to be extra cautious with the wildfires and skipped around some of the smokier areas with bad air quality so we didn’t exacerbate our recovery from the wildfire smoke inhalation issues and respiratory infection that Shannon, Brad and I came down with. After spending several hours paddling on an alpine lake near South Lake Tahoe when wildfire smoke blew in so thick that the sun was blotted out of the sky and weather warnings went out to not go exercise outside, we felt the after effects hard. Several weeks after recovering from absolutely debilitating lung issues, we felt better but not 100%. Even trekking up small hills it felt like our lung capacity was still so limited and we continued to hack up mucus and snot rocket our way through Oregon. Hopefully the pure mountain air and lots of exercise would clear our lungs up in no time. We talked to the guy about some of our hiking misadventures and then we were starting to get chilled so we said goodbye and hiked on into the lengthening shadows of the misty day.
The next 4.5 miles passed quickly and as we were almost to our campsite we saw a tent that looked very familiar since it was a unique tent made by a small cottage manufacturer. It turns out it was our friend Mighty from Hawaii! We hadn’t seen her in months since way back in Kernville and Wrightwood, California at the southern part of the Sierra Nevadas. We called out into the darkening twilight, “Mighty is that you?” and she replied, “Yes?!” When she opened her tent door we hardly recognized her! She had lost so much weight and was so skinny and it seemed like she’s absolutely crushing the trail. Back in California, she seemed so unsure of herself and overwhelmed at points. Now she seemed like a totally different person with her new found confidence and was kicking some serious butt!
Mighty said the other day she had finally completed a 30 mile day after trying to attempt the feat about a week ago but had to turn around because of a fire evacuation. Her first attempt of the 30 mile hiking day she was 15 miles in when she started seeing hikers that she knew were going north turning around and starting to head back south on the PCT. She got really confused and when she asked other hikers what was going on, the hikers told them that a park ranger was up ahead evacuating everyone from the backcountry. The fires in southern Oregon were getting really bad and they were closing the Pacific Crest Trail so Mighty had to turn around and evacuate from the backcountry quickly. When the rangers are evacuating hiking trails in person, you know it’s a bad sign. Mighty said the whole evacuation was insane but completely necessary. At one point as they were heading out to a side trail to leave the backcountry, the smoke was so bad they had to put on their N95 face masks just to be able to breathe. The N95 mask seems to be quickly becoming a necessary item for every PCT hiker not only due to Covid but to lessen the effects of wildfire smoke inhalation. Mighty said that even with the N95 mask and sunglasses on that huge chunks of ash were hitting them in the face and getting into their eyes as they hiked. Yikes! She is so lucky to be alive and that the ranger was there to evacuate her.
Mighty was low on water at camp so I gave her some of mine since we were going to the campsite that had a water source. She said she was going to drink her beer from the Trail Magic cooler to stay hydrated and then we said goodbye. About .5 miles ahead at the campsite, we cut down a side trail in the dark and descends down to a couple of tents that were already set up. We weaved around the gals Magnet and Narrator who we’d met earlier and snagged a flattish spot near another couple. It was getting dark early now and especially with the fog the night seemed to arrive a lot sooner than we were used to. Tall pine trees covered in huge draping curtains of moss rose out of the meadow and stood guard in the spooky white fog.
Shannon scooped some water from a shallow puddle that formed below a weak (but vital for hikers) spring in the hillside. We let the sediments settle out and then filtered the water in our gravity filter that had definitely seen better days. Shannon was experimenting in cold soaking a meal of lentils and split pea soup that we had purchased without realizing it had required two hours of cooking. Yikes! He warmed up the stew that had been rehydrating in a plastic bag all day but it was still pretty crunchy. I thought it was pretty good since I still couldn’t smell or taste but Shannon disagreed since he didn’t have trash taste buds like me at the moment. I chowed down on a tuna packet, Shannon ate some granola bars and we both drank our Trail Magic beers instead of drinking water. Because of my gluten intolerance, this was the first beer that I’ve had in over 3 years and I had forgotten what beer tasted like! I’m so used to the sickly sweet flavor of hard seltzers, ciders, wines and other gluten-free drinks that the kind of sour flat taste of the gluten-free beer was a little bit of a shocker.
After dinner there wasn’t much else to do as it was dark so we finished setting up the tent and stuck all of our gear inside, not bothering to hang out food because none of the other hikers had. Some of the people who worked at Timberline Lodge said that there aren’t really any bears in the area and we didn’t see any mice so we thought it’d probably be fine to keep our food in the tent. It’s really strangely there aren’t any bears in the area because there are so many berries and other stuff for them to eat. Maybe black bears are hunted in the area or avoid it because of wildfires or the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980? Who knows.
Anyways we climbed into the tent and snuggled into our sleeping bags as the thick fog condensed into big fat droplets and turned into a cold rain thumping a steady loud beat on our tent roof. We burrowed deep down into our sleeping bags, drawing our mummy hoods tightly as we snuggled for warmth while reading a little bit of our books on our phones. My eyes kept fluttering closed so we said goodnight and then buckled in for a cold August night in the wildlands of Oregon.
